Patient monitoring systems may be used to monitor physiological parameters of patients undergoing diagnostic procedures, surgical procedures, and/or various other types of medical procedures. In some settings, a nurse or technician in a pre-procedure room may prepare a patient for an upcoming procedure. This preparation may include connecting monitors to the patient for the purpose of obtaining baseline data to be used in the procedure. Such monitors may include a blood pressure monitor and pulse oximetry monitor, among others. Blood pressure readings may be taken by a blood pressure cuff, whereby a nurse or technician secures the cuff around a patient's arm and uses a device to pump air into the cuff. Once the reading from the cuff stabilizes, the nurse or technician may have to manually record the data (e.g., handwritten on a sheet of paper or typed into a portable electronic device), and save this information for later reference during the procedure and eventually, for a patient report. For the nurse or technician to take a pulse oximeter reading, he or she may have to boot up the pulse oximeter module, secure a pulse oximeter probe upon the patient, and take a reading of the patient. This reading may also be written down on paper or otherwise be manually recorded for later use. Once it is determined the patient is ready for the procedure, the nurse or technician may have to disengage the blood pressure cuff and pulse oximetry probes from the patient, so the patient can be transported from the pre-procedure room to the procedure room.
After the patient enters the procedure room and before the procedure begins, several tasks may be needed to prepare the patient for the procedure. The nurse or technician may have to reconnect both blood pressure and pulse oximetry readers before the procedure can begin. In addition to blood pressure and pulse oximetry, other connections such as, for example, capnography, supplemental oxygen, and electrocardiogram may be required. A great deal of time may be required to connect the physiological monitors to the patient and to connect the physiological monitors to the monitoring system. In some such instances, the nurse or technician must spend time reconnecting the same kinds of physiological monitors that were previously connected to the patient in the pre-procedure room. The time it takes to make these connections may occupy valuable procedure room time, thus decreasing practice efficiency. It may therefore be desirable to minimize or eliminate these monitor connections and reconnections while the patient is in the procedure room.
In various settings, it may also be desirable to deliver drugs to a patient during a procedure, such as via an IV and/or face mask, etc. Such drugs may include sedatives, anelgesics, amnestics, etc. In some instances, such drugs may be selected and/or combined to place a patient in a state of “conscious sedation” (in lieu of simply rendering a patient completely unconscious through a general anesthetic). Certain systems may also be used to automate the delivery of such drugs. For instance, such systems may be located in the same room where a medical procedure is performed, and may be coupled with a physiological monitoring system to automatically tailor the delivery of drugs based on patient parameters detected by the monitoring system. Examples of such systems are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,745,764, entitled “Apparatus and Method for Providing a Conscious Patient Relief from Pain and Anxiety Associated with Medical or Surgical Procedures,” issued Jun. 8, 2004, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein; U.S. Pat. No. 7,833,213, entitled “Patient Monitoring and Drug Delivery System and Method,” issued Nov. 16, 2010, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein; U.S. Pat. No. 7,935,081, entitled “Drug Delivery Cassette and a Medical Effector System,” issued May 3, 2011, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein; U.S. Pub. No. 2009/0292179, entitled “Medical System having a Medical Unit and a Display Monitor,” published Nov. 26, 2009, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein; and U.S. Pub. No. 2010/0010433, entitled “Medical System which Controls Delivery of a Drug,” published Jan. 14, 2010, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein.
While a variety of systems have been made and used for monitoring patients and delivering drugs to patients, it is believed that no one prior to the inventor(s) has made or used the technology as described herein.
The drawings are not intended to be limiting in any way, and it is contemplated that various embodiments of the technology may be carried out in a variety of other ways, including those not necessarily depicted in the drawings. The accompanying drawings incorporated in and forming a part of the specification illustrate several aspects of the present technology, and together with the description serve to explain the principles of the technology; it being understood, however, that this technology is not limited to the precise arrangements shown.